UMFan83

Very strange loss. Big early lead coming off 4 days of rest against a theoretically inferior team playing their 3rd game in 4 nights on the road.

Ok maybe Michigan is not as good as I hoped

2016 Super Bowl Championship run starts here: http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/machine/_/results/400874723~1~400874568~2~400874678~1~400874534~1~400874643~2~400874727~1~400874550~2~400874679~1~400874513~1~400874635~2~400874726~1~400874717~2~400874689~1~400874606~1~400874556~1~400874552~1~400874716~2~400874631~2~400874721~1~400874713~2~400874692~1~400874571~1~400874728~1~400874651~1~400874685~1~400874688~2~400874637~1~400874720~2~400874718~1~400874725~1~400874715~2~400874617~1~400874621~2~400874559~2~400874687~2~400874627~2~400874667~1~400874710~2~400874485~2~400874540~2~400874575~2~400874523~2~400874588~1~400874647~2~400874699~1~400874656~2 I can't find an easy way to make the Bears win the division.

We'll see. I'm sure if an opportunity came up to make a big move to improve short and long term of team they will make it.

Those involved rosters full of older and very expensive players that were cashed in to replenish the farm for another run later. The Cubs aren't lacking for young, cheap talent- at least not yet. guys hes not saying he thinks its going to happen, hes just saying that he thought about how much it would suck to win a title and feel what were feeling right now, only to see it stripped apart weeks later a la the marlins.

saw that too. I know the report went out of its way to say its not serious but whenever i hear 'professional athlete' and 'back injury' i cant help but be concerned.

Its a really really interesting position for Michigan. If Colorado wins, the 3 teams immediately behind Michigan for the 4 spot are 3 teams that Michigan already beat this year (well technically 2 since one of them will lose). Can you allow one of those teams to jump Michigan? FSU did just jump ahead of Louisville even though Louisville destroyed them this year so their is precedent to ignore H2H results. Then you factor in: will the committee really select 2 teams from the same conference for the first time, and have neither of those teams win their conference division much less title? Wisconsin and PSU would be 2-2 against Top 25 teams (UW: wins over #21 LSU and ~top 10 PSU, PSU: wins over #2 OSU and ~Top 10 Wisc). That doesn't beat Michigan's resume which is 3-1 against Top 10 teams. Can either really jump Michigan? If the committee wants to go a different route, which way do they go? Colorado with their 2 Top 25 wins and loss to Michigan? Oklahoma/OSU winner? OU would have that same 2-2 mark against Top 25 teams and the same overall record as UM. OSU would be 3-0 against Top 25 (thanks to Pitt sneaking in at #25) but 2 terrible losses to Central Michigan and Baylor. So you are looking at UM, Big Ten Winner, Colorado, OSU/OK winner (assuming UW would be out with a loss since committee already sees them as virtually even with Michigan). Michigan trumps 2 of those theoretically and the OSU/OK winner probably doesn't have a strong enough resume to jump from 9/10 to 4th in one week. All that said, I think the committee in that scenario would have the BTT winner jump UM and make it. Too much controversy to select Michigan there. Someone said Michigan is cemented at #5 and I think they are right, it would be really hard to move them up or down. Also I don't see Clemson dropping out of the top 4 if they lost. I think their resume is fairly solid with wins over 13-14-15 ranked teams (2 on the road) and the 2 losses being to top 25 teams.

you call it clutch, I call it pixie dust (actually he had a .999 OPS with men on last year with SDG)

Yeah he had a second surgery like a week after his first return and was out until this Monday. Has the medical condition been kept private or have I missed it? Yeah they won't say. At first they said it wasn't serious, but yesterday Terry said he didn't know what exactly was wrong with him. It definitely is something involving his throat or that general area.

My only concern is that we're going from a CF that had a roughly .400 OBP to a platoon with 2 guys in the .320's. But I guess we are going from last year's LF to Schwarber so that evens it out at the very least.

Holmes won't be very argumentative imo. I think him and Bernstein have pretty good rapport from their crosstalks.

I saw a tweet from Julie DiCaro that she was excited that Terry was back...but I thought he'd already been back. Was he gone again? Yeah he had a second surgery like a week after his first return and was out until this Monday.

Terry Boers announced his retirement effective 1/5. Sure sounds like the dude is dying based on how emotional his announcement was.

$8 million for Jon Jay?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-shake-shack-wrigleyville-1129-biz-20161128-story.html I have heard of Shake Shack, but I don't know a thing about it. I keep picturing it as equivalent to Steak & Shake, in which case I don't know why this would be news. People swear by it. It's not bad but seems fairly expensive for the size burger you get. The shakes are pretty good.

I'd be cool if they just decided to cancel the game due to general apathy from both teams and their fan bases.

Anything that predicts who makes it through the playoff crapshoot over a span of 5 years is purely for entertainment purposes (well I guess any prediction is purely entertainment, but there is less science involved in these predictions)

Although I'm sure that several Mets Refugees posters are convinced that the only reason the Cubs won the World Series is because the Mets lost the Wild Card game and/or the pitching injuries. Otherwise they were going to shut us down or something.

If it is unlikely, is it because of his salary demands, the Cubs not being sold on him being paid ace money, or both?

SportsMockery report so be forewarned but whatever I like a nice juicy rumor, even of dubious origins, to discuss during a slow period, [tweet] [/tweet] If this were a legit rumor, I guess the Cubs would rather lock up 90% of Arrieta for 4 years at maybe $20m a year if the Tigers eat a bunch of salary (he's scheduled to make $28m the next 3 seasons and then $22 in his last season) than sign Arrieta for 6 years $200m

Per rosenthal

horsefeathers

Bears are tied with the Jags for 3rd worst record in football behind the Browns (0-12) and 49ers (1-10). But since the Jags beat the Bears, the Bears hold the tiebreaker for 3rd pick. If they can get the Niners to win this weekend, they will move into the 2nd pick and own the tiebreaker over SF. So that's maybe the biggest story for this game. The second biggest story is how many no-shows for a game between teams with a combined record of 3-19 on a day with highs in the upper 30s and snow in the forecast. Last weekend there were 11k no shows. Could we see 15k empty seats this week? Edit: Nevermind apparently H2H is not a tiebreaker for draft pick order. It should be though. Bears lose the tiebreaker to the Jags by virtue of having a harder SOS. But SF does have a harder SOS than the Bears so if we lose we will at least own the 3rd pick.

So I'm in 2 fantasy leagues this year: League one I am 2nd in the league in points but am 5-7 League two I am leading the league in points but am 6-6 Luckily somehow in both leagues I am in position for the playoffs. In the first league I am tied for the last playoff spot (8 of 12 teams get in) but am scheduled to play the team I'm tied with in a defacto playin game. In the other league, I am tied with 2 other teams for the last 2 playoff spots but there are 2 weeks to go there.

I don't know, I'd think it'd be just as annoying to watch Cubs prospects we have salivated over for the past few years becoming stars down at the G-Spot. I realize this would probably be the worst time in the last however many years to trade their best player to the Cubs but at the end of the day making your team a winner is the most important thing. If the Sox think they can get better players from the Cubs than any other team, they need to make that deal.